@Richard_Littler@actuallyautistic All it needs is an earworm song simultaneously playing in the background + a back-seat commentator voice freaking out that I’m maybe going off the rails in this conversation and it’s 100% accurate for me
@btaroli@actuallyautistic I'm not sure our society encourages that, specifically, so much as it's been propagated that hard work is how you move up the hierarchy (earn money, be competitive), while not tuning into the gratis labor that parents have to do.
Back in the day, the economic model of traditional family labelled parenting a FT job, and good jobs paid for a whole family, or so the story went. It's now an antiquated model, but you can still see it on your tax forms.
@btaroli@actuallyautistic Set your boundaries ahead of time if at all possible. There are also some really great tips and stories on r/SingleParents.
It's hard. Take care of your health, though, because this moment of life will pass more quickly than you can imagine, and one notable thing you'll have to show for it is the state of your body.
I read about a new detailed map of the human brain. As expected, the "normal brains" were contrasted with "disordered" ones and how eventually they might learn "what's wrong" with them.
This could be the connection between Ehlers-Danlos and neurodivergence. (People with EDS, like me, are 7 times as likely to be autistic and 5 times as likely to have ADHD -- also like me.)
I know people with estrogen have said their ADHD gets worse during perimenopause/menopause, but I'm wondering if people with testosterone 50+ also notice their Autism/ADHD symptoms getting worse. Especially more "inattentive"/stuck in their thoughts.
I feel like we really need more research on all of this.
@pathfinder@randomgeek@actuallyautistic@neurodiversity Thank you! That's exactly what it feels like as his spouse. (It very much DOES NOT feel like what my mother dealt with, for example.) I will share this with him and see if it resonates.
I mostly use I'm autistic and have ADHD, because there isn't an established term for the property of being someone with ADHD yet.
I know about terms like "kinetic" or "pelagic", but I don't want to call myself something that I then always either have to explain, or risk people completely misunderstanding what I even said.
Another reason is, that saying "I'm ADHD" feels comparable to saying "I'm ASD", like I'm just identifying with a disorder.
@hauchvonstaub@ashleyspencer@actuallyautistic@audhd
I really wish we had a better term for ADHD for this purpose. I say "I have ADHD" for the same reasons you do, but I don't really like identifying ADHD as something I "have" when it's literally part of who I am, not an optional add-on.
My life has been one of chapters, written by someone who didn’t start the book with a plan of the narrative arc, or if they did, they kept changing their mind.
I’m feeling better about myself & my life than I’ve ever done before, having truly realised my autistic identity in the last year, at 63, but I couldn’t tell you what I’ll be doing in 5 years. There are too many variables. What’s the point of even trying to work that out?
That question should be banned from job interviews.
However a desired direction is good. Not necessarily a goal, an endpoint, but a direction. I do think we make better decisions when we have some type of path in mind. For example, “I want to be a kinder person” leads to wanting to be kinder to oneself which might lead to therapy etc.
@actuallyautistic@lifewithtrees@actuallyadhd I think NTs just want you to have ANY answer, because they think being stagnant means going backward. Means you’re a lazy drug addict waste of space. If you’re not constantly moving forward, you’re falling behind. #HustleCulture. If asked at a job, talk about being promoted twice and acquiring new business management skills. Just have answers that sound good, no one expects you follow through on them.
@pathfinder@lifewithtrees@actuallyautistic
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I guess I don't tell myself, "I love the city," but I don't hate it. I don't have dreams of a place of my own in the country, I suppose from forever dreaming of human connections, I have zero survvivalist leanings
I never thought I had a NY accent until I moved to Indiana for a couple of years but evidently I have a bit of Bronx-y accent (from Westchester). They would make fun of me for saying caw fee (coffee) and dawg (dog).
Anyway with my accent giving me away many people shared their stories like yours about visiting NYC. Many included going back to the hotel and curling up in a quiet bed. One was of getting frozen in the crosswalk in Times Square due to overload.
What some people don’t seem to be able to understand is that for the ones with executive disfunction number of steps matters a lot.
I just put away all my dried laundry aside of duvet cover.
Why? Because for all the other things it’s easy one-step task: grab all the knickers and shove them into the drawer, get the home clothes and put it into home clothes cube box(that cubed Ikea shelf is such a helper for people like me, I just have a cube for every thing).
But the linen shelf is at the top of the bathroom closet, and it’s almost full. So I need a stepladder to be able to put the duvet cover there(I can try to shove it there without, I kinda reach the shelf itself, but in its current state the cover is likely to fall from there, and probably with some other things, so that would upset me which I am not ready to deal with now).
But the stepladder is now occupied by my winter shoes which were drying there before I put them away for summer.
But to put them away I need to get two big boxes from under my bed, empty one by putting everything that is there into the other one, put all the shoes there, put the boxes back under the bad, ensure all the boxes there are arranged in a way that is allowing my cat to play in that labyrinth, and probably clean up after that as I suppose there’s going to be a few dust bunnies.
Gosh, I got tired by just typing all that.
Going through all those steps may bot take too much time(if I don’t get distracted by something, including the urge to sort everything perfectly), but the very thought of going through all those steps just discourages me so much that I can’t find energy to start. “It’s just one duvet cover!” - they say. “It’s a shitton of steps!” - I answer.
Well, the cover is drying in a way that obscures a view from my bed which irritates me enough to maybe develop enough anger to put it away in the weekend.
@olena@actuallyautistic Today, I asked my SO to do the second half of a task, because it were too many steps and I felt overwhelmed. After doing the first half (about 5 steps, maybe), it didn't feel overwhelming anymore to do the last 4 steps. It's sooo strange how our brains work.
@autism101@actuallyautistic
Everyday life of a #gifted and #autistic
🙄
My gifted brain: Hey, look, something new, exciting, challenging!! Yay!!!🥳🥳🥳
My autistic brain: Now, wait a sec.... hey, what you're doing??? You know, we can't deal with that?!?!
My gifted brain: Oh, shut up, this is sooo cool!!!💃🎵🎶🎵
My autistic brain: *sigh
Me: thanks guys... *overwhelmed *shutdown
😒😔🤯
@autism101@actuallyautistic About 8: Learning that not everyone (including other autistic people) want to hear your infodump is important. I've been on the receiving end of unwanted infodumps and was very displeased, even though I doubt the infodumpers knew that it was unwanted.
‘I would strongly recommend going through the ADHD testing, but I am not licensed to do the test myself, so I can’t give you the official diagnosis of it as it can only be provided after the test by a licensed specialist, and there are very few ones with this narrow license. However, if you manage to get the test done, come to me with the diagnosis, I would accept it from any licensed provider, and then I would be able to provide you the treatment and the medication: though your insurance doesn’t cover the evaluation, it covers treatment.
As for the autism testing, do it if you have extra money as anyway there’s no treatment against it, and if you struggle with any particular issue - we can work on each of them on the therapy without an official autism diagnosis’ - the second psychiatrist after actually talking to me.
For the reference: depending on the provider, the testing is around 400 euro for either(I haven’t found any combined option, btw, so if I want to do both, it’d double)
Yes, there’s general free healthcare. When I asked in my health center about the psychiatrist appointment(without even specifying the goal), I was told the waiting list currently is more than an year, so they won’t even book one for me.
And people still would go “If yOu rEalLy hAd AuDHD, yoU’D hAvE aN ofFiciAl diAgnoSis”…